USA > Michigan > Ottawa County > History of Ottawa County, Michigan with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 3
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Traces of ancient cities with hundreds of thousands of inhabi- tants are found, whose people probably disappeared ages before the Indians. It is somewhat difficult to distinguish the burial places of the Indians from that of the mound builders, as the former some- times made use of existing mounds. But the skeleton of the In- dian can be distinguished by its greater size, and the tombs of the mound builders are generally larger, and contain more relics of art. Some believe that the mound builders were of the same race as the Peruvians and Mexicans; if so, they were doomed to extinction by Spanish rapacity for gold.
Following the mound builders were the race that reared the mag- nificent cities, the ruins of which are found in Central America, a people far more advanced in arts and civilization than the mound builders. The cities built by them, judging from the ruins of broken columns, fallen arches, and crumbling walls of temples. palaces, and pyramids, which in some instances for miles strew the ground, must
have been of great extent, magnificent and very populous. By re- flecting on the vast periods of time necessary to erect these colossal structures, and the time again necessary to reduce them to their present state, we get some idea of their antiquity. These cities must have been old when the ancient cities of the east were being built.
THE INDIANS.
Distinct in every particular from the two former races is the pres- ent Indian. They were found by early discoverers without cultiva- tion, refinement or literature. Of their predecessors they knew noth- ing, they have no traditions of their ancestry. Some suppose them indigenous, others as of Asiatic origin. In Michigan the great tribes were the Algonquins and the Iroquois. The latter were a great and extensive alliance of tribes of a common origin, and they waged al- most a continuous warfare with the whites, especially against the English. Such was the nature of King Philip's war, such the na- ture of Pontiac's conspiracy. The art of hunting supplied them with the means of living as well as excitement and distinction. Their dwellings were of the simplest and rudest character. But in regard to the character and history of the Indians we cannot do better than quote the language of one who knew them well, both as the son of an early Indian missionary, and as himself personally ac- quainted wita them and their language.
On the 4th of July, 1876, the centennial year, the orator of the day at Grand Haven was Col. W. M. Ferry, fitting representative of an historic family, known throughout the Union. We make copious extracts from this admirable address, as it is well worthy of preser- vation.
"The name Ottawa (Ot-taw-wah) the meaning of which is trader, is that of a tribe of Indians who overran the lower peninsula of Michigan, from Grand River northward. They came from Canada about the year 1600, driving out the Sacs and Foxes, who located west of. Green Bay in what is now Wisconsin. South of Grand River were located the Muscotay or Prairie Indians, with whom the Ottaw-wahs lived in peace, The Potawatamies were in north- ern Illinois and Indiana, and with the Kickapoos, jointly occupied those states, and the Potawatamies held Michigan as far north as the St. Joseph River.
This portion of the State remained in the joint occupancy of the Ottaw-wahs and Potawatamies until the advent of the whites, and to the extinction of their title to their lands by treaties with the U. S. Government. These treaties occurred as follows: In 1785, 1787, 1795, and in 1807 a land-office was established at Detroit. In 1807 a treaty was made by which was ceded to the United States, lands west and north of Detroit to the western line of what is now Saginaw, Shiawassie, Washtenaw and Lenawee Counties, embrac- ing all the counties now formed out of that portion of the State, be- tween that western line and lakes Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Detroit Rivers.
In 1819, by the treaty of Saginaw the ceded land was extended sixty miles west of what is now the principal Meridian of the State Survey, reaching into Kent County, and from thence to Thunder Bay River and along that river to Lake Huron, and in 1818, these lands were brought into market.
By the treaty of Chicago, in 1821, with the Ottaw-wahs, Ojibe- ways and Potawatamies, the tract of Michigan lying west of the cessions of 1807 and 1819 and reaching from the southern boundary of the State, to the Grand River, and its most northerly source was secured to the United States, (p. 226 Lanman's Hist. Mich.) Land offices were established at White Pigeon and Kalamazoo.
By treaty at Grand Rapids, in 1835, and the establishment of a land office at Ionia, in 1836, the lands north of Grand River, were brought into market in 1839.
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HISTORY OF OTTAWA COUNTY ..
I name these facts to bring before us how recently the Indian titles to lands in this portion of the State were extinguished.
By treachery and strategy the Potawatamies induced the Ottaw- wahs to join them and annihilate the Prairie Indians, whose occu- pancy of the intermediate territory, i. e., between the Grand River and the St. Joseph, was obnoxious to the Potawatamies, and the inci. dent that brought on the war occurred in this wise:
A deputation of Potawatamies were visiting the Ottaw-wahs in this county at one of their villages near the mouth of Crockery Creek. A woman of the Ottaw-wahs while out in the woods, away from the village, in search of ground-nuts, was murdered and horri- bly butchered by some of these Potawatamies, who had been await- ing some opportunity to provoke the Ottaw-wahs into an assault on the Prairie Indians. The Ottaw-wahs were made to believe that the brutal murder was committed by the Prairie Indians and at once they joined forces with the Potawatamies and waged a relentless war of extermination against their former friends.
Near Lyons, in Ionia county, the Prairie Indians made a stand, fortified themselves within a strong stockade and for a time held their assailants at bay -- so completely were they surrounded and by such a force as to preclude the possibility of procuring the needed supply of food for a long resistence, and at the first favorable oppor- tunity, which occurred in the night, they fought their way through the ranks of the besiegers and made their escape towards Detroit. They were, however, overtaken, hemmed in, and nearly all were slaughtered. A remnant escaped and fled to the Miamies, with which tribe they were merged, and who were located near Sandusky on the Maumee River.
Thus was lost all identity of the tribe of Muscotays, the first occupants of our county so far as any knowledge can be gathered from history or tradition.
The incident above named is doubtless the history of similar changes in the name of the occupants of the Great Northwest, and it is only of interest to us, as it defines who were the possessors of this county for a few hundred years before the whites made attempts to improve and cultivate this beautiful valley; their possession of this county to this day, or for hundreds or thousands of years to come, would not have made a perceptible change; their possession meant war to all others, and new blood among them came only by the cap- tive taken in battle, or the remnant of tribes doomed to annihilation. Never a new purpose or ambition did or could come to them to change this result of their existence.
For hundreds and perhaps thousands of years had the wilds of America been occupied by tribes of Indians, whose history has left scarcely a mark on this broad continent; a land without a parallel in material to demonstrate the possibilities of human endeavor, and yet save only by fragmentary traditions, handed down from genera- tion to generation, has the successive occupancy by different tribes been preserved.
In about forty years of occupancy by our race, mark the change! I have so introduced this narrative that it may tend by comparison to remind us forcibly of the wide variance in the purpose and am- bition of the races of men. They lived natural lives. Art, the sciences were unknown to them, and they remained contentedly in- different to any knowledge of the idea even of improvement or ad- vancement. With some evidence of what we deem the humanities of the nobler type, yet very animals in the strength and vigor of their bodies from generation to generation, probably the doctrine of selection had full sway here-the weak dying or forced out, and the strong only reproducing to live in the struggle with natural enemies.
With no ability to concoct a stimulant beyond that of the smoke of tobacco, they were a temperate people. With no moral restraints
they were licentious, and yet were they healthy and vigorous, without the diseases incident to such a life. Venturesome as beasts of prey in pursuit of their victims, they were in open war or silent stealth the same sanguinary, relentless foe. Superstition was the expression of their religion, and the gentler attributes of humanity were not much, either cultivated or exercised.
Through pride for the adornment of their bodies, a traffic was built up among them, an exchange of the skins and furs of wild animals for beads, cloth and trinketry. Amid such a race was the settlement of Ottawa County begun. Jealous, thievish, lazy, im- provident, treacherous clans and tribes of Indians occupied entirely this county and the entire country north of Grand River to the straits of Mackinaw. South of Grand River one family only, at the mouth of the Kalamazoo, was the extent of the white population in all the lake counties to the St. Joseph River. A Mr. Butler had located at Saugatuck, early in 1834; with this exception there was not a white family in the entire peninsula, north of the St. Joseph in the west, and Saginaw in the east, of the State.
The highest and noblest achievement to which the Indians of this locality aspired was to kill an Osage and bring the scalp to Michigan. The Osage Indians lived in Missouri, and were esteemed by the Ottaw-wahs to be, of all beings, the sum of all that was worthy of death. Whence came this inveterate, implacable hatred is not now traceable, but it was born with them, and had been born with their progenitors in past generations for ages. These sentiments were fully reciprocated by the Osages, and alike was this inborn hatred an hereditary matter with them toward the Ottaw-wahs. The sure passport to distinction for an Ottaw-wah youth was a successful return with the priceless Osage scalp. From six months to a year, sometimes longer, was the needed time to carefully thread his way through Michigan, and the trackless prairies of Illinois, across the Mississippi to the interior of Missouri, and the Ottaw-wah brave must traverse this long journey stealthily, for he is among other hos- tile tribes equally vigilant, and to run this gauntlet to his destination and return safely was a most perilous and hazardous attempt. The location of the Ottaw-wahs in Michigan brought these vengeful tribes much nearer to each other than formerly, when Canada was the home of the Ottaw-wahs, and the occasional signature of the Osage, cut deep across the breast of the lifeless, scalped body of an Ottaw-wah, who has fallen almost at his own lodge fire before the superior vigilance of his enemy, was not a matter of unfrequent oc- currence in this county, even years after the whites first came to the Grand River Valley, and was merely the intent honorable toward a fair adjustment of balances between the two tribes in their crue murderous records, that for ages were an open account, eagerly gloated over by both tribes as the grandest, most glorious possibility of their manhood.
By such education as this was the savage of North America schooled. At this day exists between the Sioux and Ojibeways, of our western territories, a parallel to the implacable hatred that has always existed between the Ottaw-wahs of Michigan and the Osages of Missouri.
The first trader who located in what was Ottawa County, then embracing Muskegon County, was Pierre Constant, a Frenchman of the type of that advance guard of pioneers, Marquette, La Salle, Joliet and Tonti, who 200 years before invaded and brought to the eye of the world the great Northwest. He was of the chevalier order of men, brave, honorable and undaunted amid all dangers. In 1810 he engaged with the British Fur Company, then having a depot at Mackinaw, as a trader, and with his supply of merchandise coasted along the shore of Lake Michigan, and established a trading post on Grand River, near what is now called Charleston, and one on the banks of Muskegon Lake. He married an Indian woman
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HISTORY OF OTTAWA COUNTY.
of remarkable beauty and intelligence, by whom six children were born to him. Once a year he, with his family and the result of his venture in furs and peltries, coasted down Lakes Michigan and Huron to Pen-a-tan-qui-shine, the Indian depot for Upper Canada.
The eldest of this family was a daughter, who inherited her mother's beauty as well as the higher qualities of mind of the father, and this daughter, Louise Constant, or "Lisette," as she was called, became her father's clerk when twelve years old, and was as well known for her wonderful faculties for business, as she was for her personal attractions. In 1828, when Lisette was seventeen years old, her father died. She closed up his business with the British company, engaged with the American Fur Company at Mackinaw, receiving from them a large supply of merchandise, and for six years conducted the most successful trading establishment then in the Northwest.
Think of it ye who disparage the ability of women!
She married William Lasley, of Muskegon, also an Indian trader, and, now an aged widow, resides in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Her son, Henry S. Lasley, is one of the prominent merchants of Montague, Muskegon County.
The universal testimony from all sources is that the Indians of Ottawa County were uniformly kind, honorable and manly to the white settlers, but their intercourse with the whites has not im- proved them.
INDIAN TRADERS.
The business of trading with the Indians was confined to those who had a government license, and the trader was bound by oath, and furnished bonds to follow the rules prescribed. The following, for instance, is Louis Campau's license :
1. Your trade will be confined to the place to which you are licensed.
2. Your transactions with the Indians will be confined to fair and friendly trade.
3. You will attend no council held by the Indians, nor send them any talk, or speech, accompanied by wampum.
4. You are forbidden to take any spirituous liquors of any kind into the Indian country; or to give, sell, or dispose of any to the Indians.
5. Should any person attempt to trade without a license, or any trader with a license, carry spirituous liquors into the Indian country, the Indians are authorized to seize for their own use the goods of such trader, and the owner shall have no claim on them or the United States for the same.
6. This regulation requires the trader to inform on unlicensed traders.
7. Requires the trader to inform the Indians of regulation five.
8. To inculcate upon the Indians the necessity of peace, and the desire of their great father, the President, to live in harmony with them. WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE,
Secretary.
Dated November 15, 1822.
With his license and his goods the trader repaired to his dis- trict, and called a council of the natives to decide whether they would have him remain or not. If they did not like him he might as well pack up. Many traders, to increase the confidence of the Indians, took native wives. Indeed the Indians demanded this proof of sympathy. The alliances thus formed were generally for 100 moons, when, according to Indian usage, the wife might be let go. Thus Rix Robinson married an Indian wife, as did Martin Ryer- son, Pierre Constant, and other early traders. In 1825 Rix Robin- son located as Indian trader with his principal station at Ada, in Kent County, but also other outlying stations, among which was one
at Grand Haven. Louis Campau brought on $5,000 worth of goods in 1827, commencing on the west side of the river at Grand Rapids, where was Rev. Mr. Slater's Protestant Mission.
There was then quite an Indian village at Battle Point, under Chief Onamontapay (Old Rock). Near Holland was a band of 300 under Wakazoo, who had made advances in civilization, used oxen, carts, plows, etc., learned the use of the ax, had a church made of lumber picked up on the lake shore, and had some log huts for storehouses. Isaac Fairbanks, Justice of the Peace in Holland, was the government farmer among them, and the Rev. George N. Smith was the missionary. These Indian farms were about three miles south-east of Holland. In 1848 the mission and the Indians were removed to Grand Traverse.
Settlers could not secure their lands until the great land sale of 1839. Before this they were chiefly squatters, or pre-empters. The Indians and whites lived together, each amicably acknowledg- ing the other's rights; and after the sale the Indians disappeared, leaving their burying mounds behind them only to be desecrated by the plow of the pale face. Their rights have been respected by the Government, they have been paid for their hunter's rights. None can say: " I own the land." One only owns certain rights to it, and the State, representing mankind, has the paramount right.
The three stages of progress have been, first, the trader and trapper for furs, then the lumberman, and, lastly, the tiller of the soil. The first has about disappeared, the second is going, but the land is eternal.
THE OPENINGS.
One of the effects of Indian occupation may be seen in the fre- quency of the so-called "openings," which were the first portions to be taken possession of by the settlers, being more inviting than the heavily-timbered country, as the labor of clearing and getting in crops was comparatively small. These openings extended several miles from the river. In the oak woods there may be observed growths of two kinds, one of very large scattering trees, and the other of a thick growth of smaller ones. The large trees were all that was upon the land when it was first occupied. The land was "open," with no fallen timber, and nothing but the very scattered oak trees to ob- struct the view. A wagon or a load of hay could be driven anywhere.
The settler had only to cut down or girdle the scattered oaks, put in the plow, and sow his ground. Neither the "openings" nor the "prairies" were the result of nature, but arose from the Indian practice of burning over the lands, with the double object of being better able to see their game and to make them more healthy. Where they only killed the young trees it was an "opening;“ where they burned every tree it became a "prairie." Where the under- growth was hickory or oak, the fire killed only so much as was above the ground, leaving the root to sprout again. These strong, heavy roots, with insignificant bushes growing out of them, were called "grubs." A fire running through would kill the young bushes, and the land would be clear. As the early settlers had not generally been backwoodsmen they preferred these clearings to the better timbered lands.
PIONEER SETTLERS.
Shortly after the American revolution the American Fur com- pany determined to push their posts farther west, and commissioned Madame La Framboise, a French lady, to locate a post, and estab- lish a trade in the vicinity of the Grand Rapids of the Owashte- nong or Grand River. The lady came, and received the permission of the two tribes, and had in about 1780 succeeded in building the first trading post, and stocking it with Indian supplies. The post was in the town of Lowell, two miles west of the Indian village at
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HISTORY OF OTTAWA COUNTY.
Grand Rapids. Although there was a post here the Indians often penetrated to Detroit not so much to obtain cheap goods as a supply of "fire water". As the annual "Powwow" approached it was con- sidered necessary to visit Detroit to obtain the rum necessary for that occasion. Madame La Framboise remained at her post until superseded by Rix Robinson in 1821. She had been a successful agent for the government, but her advanced age, and the growing interest of the fur company demanded her removal. The old chim- ney of her hut and the excavations in which her canoes were hid are the oldest relics of pioneer life in the Grand River valley. It will surprise many to learn that a lady was the first pioneer of the valley, a woman however of no ordinary force of character, a shrewd trader and a bold adventurer. The first trader in Ottawa County was Pierre Constant, a Frenchman, who in 1810 engaged with the Brit- ish Fur company at Mackinaw, a man bold, honorable and undaunt- ed amid all dangers. He established a post at a small place known as Charleston, on the Grand River, and another on Muskegon Lake. He coasted from Mackinaw with his stock of goods and landed on the west coast. He married the daughter of an Indian chief, and his daughter married the Indian trader Wm. Lasley.
One of the early pioneers in his reminiscences, says that along the banks of the Grand River were to be seen many monuments of mound builders, now overturned by the plow, and a few miles down the river below the rapids was a group of 12, larger than the rest. Grandville prairie was undoubtedly occupied by the mound builders, and in Georgetown, there was a long, straight roadway of several feet in width and extending across a swamp on which a large amount of labor had been expended. The valley from its natural advantages must have been occupied for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. Grand Rapids was once the capital of the united tribes of the Ottaw-wahs and Potawatamies, the latter receiving their chiefs however from the former, and when the whites arrived, old Noon Day held sway, who had been at the burning of Buffalo village in 1813. He was a tall, symmetrically formed gentleman, while his wife was dumpy and inferior looking, her face marred with scars.
RIX ROBINSON, THE PIONEER.
The pioneer in the settlement of Ottawa County was Rix Rob- inson. In 1814 he left his home near Auburn, N. Y., for a trial of frontier life. He had finished a course of academic education, and was within three months of the close of a course of study of the law, which would admit him to practice at the bar. At this time an in- cident of an entirely personal nature determined him in abandoning a brilliant prospect as a lawyer and to launch out upon the uncer- tainties of whatever might be developed in the west by such energy, health and brain as he possessed.
He was twenty-six days en route from Buffalo to Detroit, where he entered into partnership with a Mr. Phelps for business, as sutlers to the United States troops stationed there, attending the troops as they went from post to post along the frontier, and in trading with the Indians. His father had given him as capital $1000 in specie, which he exchanged for bank bills at an advance of $80, and with this amount he went to New York and made his purchases as his in- vestment in the company business. After two years of varied experiences in profit and loss, mostly loss however, he closed out this partnership venture by taking old notes to the amount of $2500, only one of which (against a well known operator at Mack- inaw, Michael Dousman) was of any coloring of hopeful result in a possible future value, and $100 in specie as his share of the com- pany's assets. With this money and the avails of the Dousman note he went to. St. Louis and invested all in tobacco. A favorable result from this venture enabled him to make a small beginning in
trading with the Indians, and with the successful progress of his en- deavors he established a trading post at the Calumet, in Illinois, near the head of Lake Michigan, among the Potawatamies and Kickapoos, in 1817; on the Illinois river, twenty-five miles above its mouth, in 1819; at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1820; at the mouth of Grand River, Ottawa County, Michigan; and at the mouth of the Thorn Apple, Kent County, Michigan, in 1821. During these years the yearly journey was made to and from St. Louis by canoe and barge, following water courses and across the intermediate portages as was the manner of the Indians in their travels-a slow and tedious process to obtain his supplies of merchandise and to carry back the result in furs and peltries. When Mackinaw became the central depot of the American Fur Company for the lakes, his supplies and sales were purchased and made at that island, as the more convenient market to reach, which was done by coasting along the shores of Lake Michigan with what were called batteaux. This style of craft has now gone out of service, small patterns of which, however, are still used as fishing boats in the vicinity of Mackinaw, Sault St. Mary and upon Lake Superior by the French and Indian residents. The voyages of these batteaux along the lakes from the north and south to and from Mackinaw, carrying the heavy freightage of this commerce of the lakes, was the great event of each year not only to the traders, but to the many tribes of Indians that then peo- pled the entire Northwest. These boats were rigged with wide spreading sails for favoring winds-the masts and sails to be un- shipped and carried on either side upon crotched stanchions arranged for that purpose, when the oar was the modelof propulsion, and manned each by a crew of from eight to twelve voyagers, generally Canadian Frenchmen, and one principal, or conductor, with each boat who acted as steersman, captain and general supervisor of his craft and men.
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